Ice Cold Synths Ableton Live Pack

Looking for some icy, cold sounds? Want to create a wintery feel in your music? Perhaps you need sounds to recreate darker moods and emotions. The Ice Cold Synths Ableton Live Pack is a collection of 40 Ableton Live Instrument Racks perfect for those situations.

Add Some Winter Chill to Your Music!

As much as I love a warm and smooth synthesizer sound, sometimes I need something cold with lots of texture for the mood I am going for. That's why I built this Pack. It was inspired by the cold winter weather we are having here in New York, where frozen snow currently covers the ground. This Pack will give you leads, pads, plucks, and effects, all with the frost bite of winter.

Listen to the track I created below, which uses some of the Instruments from the collection accompaning a nylon string guitar. It was written in the middle of last week's blizzard, as I tried to capture some of the beauty and power of the storm in music. The visuals were created with Isotonik Studios' World Collection.

How The Ice Cold Synths Pack Was Made...

Each of the 40 Instruments in the Ice Cold Synths Ableton Live Pack was made with an instance of Simpler, Ableton's sampling instrument. The samples come from a wide range of sources. I used a collection of analog and digital hardware synths, virtual instruments, and samples of real instruments and household objects. A large portion of the sounds are built from FM synthesis. I also had a lot of fun experimenting with Granular synthesis. I found the nature of Granular synthesis to be full of cold sounding textures. I recorded samples of metallic objects, which I banged, scratched, and clanked together. There's guitar and vocal-based samples, and even sounds made from random household objects. Those samples were dropped into the Max for Live Granulator sampler and further manipulated. I pitched them out so they can be played on the keyboard, effected them and resampled them.

This preset is called "Ice-Nine," named after the material in Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, which could instantly freeze anything it touched. The Macro Controls allow for complete customization of the sound.

Long Evolving Samples with Lots of Movement and Texture

I made sure that each sound was a long sample with plenty of modulation and change as it plays. In the image above, you can see how the sample changes dramatically over time. There's a lot of winter-inspired texture to each sound, such as ice break, water freezing, icy winds, and snow falling and crunching under footsteps. The samples were placed in Simpler, where there's more possibility for control. Each instrument has Macro Controls that let you customize the sound to fit perfectly in your mixes.

Embrace the Cold!

This is a super unique collection of sounds that can find a home in any production, regardless of genre.

Whether you need a pad, lead, bass, or arctic transitional noise, the Ice Cold Synths Ableton Live is guaranteed to please, or your money back and you keep the sounds.

Here's a full video walkthrough of the Pack:

Ice Cold SynthsAbleton Live Pack

40 Ableton Live Instrument Racks inspired by the winter. Icy, frozen, lonely, wintery synths created from a variety of hardware and digital synthesizers, as well as interesting samples and granular synthesis. Bring a chill to your music!

AfroDJMac is the work of Brian Funk, a New York-based musician, producer, and Ableton Certified Trainer. He's a writer, podcaster, and curious sound designer who loves to share his knowledge about music production and the creative process.